How to Send Plumbing Invoices in 60 Seconds (Not 60 Minutes)

The Sunday Night Invoicing Problem

Sunday night. The week is almost done. You have eight jobs to invoice before Monday morning, because if you wait until the week is in full swing, it won't happen until Thursday — and then you're waiting on payment until next week or the week after.

So you sit down with your notes, open up your spreadsheet or your QuickBooks, and start manually entering job details, parts, labor, customer info. An hour later, you've got eight invoices out. You could have been with your family. Or sleeping.

This is one of the most common and frustrating patterns for plumbing contractors: the work is done, but the money doesn't move until the paperwork catches up. Plumbing invoice automation fixes that.

Why Delayed Invoices Mean Delayed Payments

There's a direct relationship between when you send an invoice and when you get paid.

Send an invoice the same day as the job? Most customers pay within a few days.

Send it a week later? They've moved on. The job is done, the urgency is gone. Now it's paperwork they'll get to eventually.

Send it two weeks later? You might as well send a gentle reminder attached to the invoice, because that's probably what it'll take.

The faster you invoice, the faster you get paid. Plumbing invoice automation doesn't just save you time — it improves your cash flow.

How Automated Invoicing Works

Here's the basic setup:

When a job closes, your field service app (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, FieldEdge) generates an invoice automatically based on the job record — parts used, labor time, any notes you added.

The invoice is sent immediately to the customer via email, often with a link to pay online.

Payment is recorded automatically when the customer pays, syncing back to your accounting software.

A payment reminder goes out if the invoice isn't paid within your terms (5 days, 7 days, 10 days — whatever you set).

The entire cycle — job completion to paid invoice — can happen without you manually doing anything beyond closing out the job in the app.

Connecting to QuickBooks

Most plumbing contractors use QuickBooks (or another accounting tool) for their books. The good news is that the main field service platforms integrate directly with QuickBooks.

What that means practically:

• When you close a job and generate an invoice, the data flows to QuickBooks automatically
• Customer records sync so you're not entering the same info in two places
• Payments recorded in your field service app show up in QuickBooks

• At tax time, your books are current without manual data entry

If you're currently entering job data into both your scheduling tool and QuickBooks by hand, that's the clearest case for plumbing invoice automation — you're doing duplicate work that a properly configured integration handles for you.

Automated Payment Reminders

Getting the invoice out is step one. Following up when it's not paid is step two — and it's the one most plumbers skip because it feels uncomfortable.

Automated reminders remove the awkwardness. The system sends them on a schedule you set:

• Day 3: "Just a reminder that invoice #1234 is due — pay online here: [link]"
• Day 7: "Invoice #1234 is now past due. Please give us a call if there's a question."
• Day 14: "We haven't received payment for invoice #1234. Please contact us to resolve."

You don't have to be the one chasing. The system handles it. If there's a real issue (customer dispute, wrong invoice), they'll reach out. Most of the time, the reminder is all it takes.

Getting Started

If you're currently invoicing manually, the fastest path is:

1. Make sure you're using a field service platform that has invoicing built in (Jobber and Housecall Pro are good starting points for smaller operations)
2. Connect it to QuickBooks if you use QuickBooks
3. Set up automatic invoice sending when a job closes
4. Configure payment reminders for overdue invoices

The setup takes a few hours. The time you save every week adds up fast.

If you want help setting up plumbing invoice automation for your business — including choosing the right tools and configuring the integrations — that's exactly what we handle at FlexLever.